Author: utpress

THE MAGICIAN’S THUMB

By Dennis Scott Herbert

It wriggled and writhed on the floor attached to a string that we could all see but pretended not to because Rodney was trying so damned hard and he hadn’t drunk a drop for three months.

But when the dog swooped in and bit that thumb up in his mouth, it started some trouble. Because you see, Rodney kept hold of that string and chased the dog for the reason that he wanted his removable rubber thumb back and the dog had gone and ruined the trick and all. So, Rodney is chasing down the pup yelling these profanities and threats like, “I’m gonna stomp that terrible terrier,” and “rotten fuckin shitball,” and all sorts of inappropriate things considering the kids being around for the magic show.

My girlfriend Em is hollering out, “He’s drunk, he’s drunk.” And that really didn’t help. The intensity of the moment was ramped up is all that did. Other people are saying, “Don’t hurt the dog,” and “he’s just a little guy,” and the kids are screaming and carrying on, they can tell things have taken a foul turn. But I doubt Rodney heard any of it. He really wanted that thumb.

I try to calm Em and tell her he’s not drunk and I’ll take care of it. I really just want to tone down the fervor; the house is frantic. So, I head to the kitchen where Rodney had followed the dog, thinking I can stifle his anger. But before I get there I hear the yelp, we all hear the yelp, and the banging of cupboards and the boots and the stomping, just the general commotion of an angered amateur magician upset with the dog that spoiled his act.

When I make it in, I see the mound of fur, Peanut, is hurt but not dead like I half expected and the “Happy Birthday” banner is tinsel and twisted, partially torn down, hanging by a corner, and there’s Rodney winding the string up around his detachable thumb and paper streamer stuck on his shoulder. He looks over at me with furrowed brows, one arm partially raised, and says, “You believe that damn dog. There’s bite marks all over this thing.” I shake my head telling him he’s gotta go and send him out the back door before Em can reach the scene.

Well, once Em does make it to the kitchen she screams out, “Peanut!” and goes into her hysterics telling everybody the party’s over and to get the hell out, which I thought was pretty rude, I gotta say. She scoops the dog up, calls her boy into the kitchen, and tells him, “Chance, my little man, sorry if your birthday was ruined,” and looks at me all dirty-like. I knew it wasn’t true, I saw how he lit up unwrapping my slingshot, the gift I’d been forbidden to buy a week ago. I try to give him a wink even though I’m lousy at it.

 

It’s the first time we’re in the vet’s office since the incident with our turtle, Lockjaw, who wouldn’t eat, whose shell got all soft and spongy, who Em carried in on the palm of her hand, who made the doc smile weakly when he saw us, a look of pity and embarrassment behind his specs, who when we got home had to be taken out back to be buried under a little pine sapling, a grave marked with crossed popsicle sticks: Here Lies Lockjaw.

The same doc looked down his nose at us this time, into our wide eyes, and told us “looks like our little Peanut took a pretty good kick.” We had nothing to worry about, though, the pup could still walk around he said. But when the dog came creaking out of the back, a set of wheels strapped to his hindquarters like the training device you’d find on a bicycle, his front legs churning away and the rest of him rolling behind, well it sent Em over the edge.

“You piss-poor hack,” she starts screaming at him and it is obvious this catches him off-guard. He’s backing up with his hands at his shoulders like somebody’s pointing a six-shooter at his heart. “You’re telling me we have nothing to worry about,” she keeps going at him with her head whipping around on her skinny frame and her arms flailing around, “Do you know what people are going to think?”

The doctor’s chin is tucked into his neck and he opens his mouth, trying to explain it’s only temporary and is common procedure, I think, but I cut him short with apologies over and over. He can tell I just want to get this girlfriend of mine out of the office.

I pay the bill, nearly a month’s rent, and we head for the exit. The anger resonates in her footsteps and that clenched jaw is a hairpin trigger. She storms ahead of us and I keep the pace in back with Peanut, who squeaks squeaks squeaks down the aisle turning the heads of all the customers. I wave.

The whole drive home I gotta hear about Rodney. How he’s sick and needs help. Em keeps looking over at me quipping these things like, “how can you two be so tight?” and “don’t you just feel so bad for having a maniac like that around those children?” We get to a red light. She grabs my arm and locks in a stare.

“He drinks too much. I don’t want you hanging around him anymore.” She says. And I look right back into her, her face painted pretty and lashes shadowed, I look into those dark wide pupils, black eyes like a killing machine.

“His drinking didn’t seem to bother you when you used to stick those drugs up your nose,” I reply. “It was all fun then, I guess.”

Em lets out this shriek like she’s boiling a pot of water in her chest; it causes Peanut to whimper in the back.

“You’re a sonovabitch, you know that,” she says.

We sit in silence the rest of the way home.

I pull into the driveway; the Chevy rumbles low and deep. Em is out the door with a slam before I can twist the engine off; I help Peanut out of the back seat and let him do his business on the front lawn before leading him to the house, picking his rear wheels up and over the couple stairs in the walkway.

Inside, Em is giving her boy hell for playing video games the entire time we were gone, then clamors up the stairs when she sees me come in; she was having an awful day I knew. I turn the TV off and say, “It’s too nice out, man.”

Coming from the upstairs, I can hear Em’s muffled voice on the phone and her pacing steps. It’s a while before I hear the bedroom door creak open.

Sometimes she can look so delicate when she walks, and this time, her coming down the staircase with an overnight bag in hand makes my bones split and crack apart. I want to crawl inside, I want to displace all of her grief, my head is burning off to be back in the beginning.

“I’m going to visit Amy for the weekend in the Keys,” she says. Her voice drips out just so, as if to say, you remember the Keys of course. And I do remember the Keys and Jorge and the ambiguity. I want to pull off her leg; I want to lock her up in the bedroom, and throw that suitcase back in the closet. I want her to stay.

“What about your boy and your poor Peanut?” I ask.

“Well,” she says, “I figure after the whole birthday fiasco you can have the opportunity to make amends. You know, spend some quality time.” Her red lips stained and she smiles goodbye.

I watch her go out the door. Chance is chasing the few fireflies that have shown up early in dusk, something I haven’t seen a kid do in forever; she kneels down to his level and kisses his forehead. A taxi waits on the curb to take her away. It says ‘yellow cab’ over top a white paint job. And I just don’t understand.

The road twists and winds, snaking its way around avoiding the beam of the headlights, but we follow it nevertheless, in the full, rumbling Chevy. Chance with the case of beer at his feet and Peanut in between us, we’re headed to the hill and the leftover stones from my last project plink around in the truck bed with every bump and turn. If she could only see us now.

Out at the shale pit, or what was once a shale pit, we drive past all the trailers bunched together on the flat meadow, past the broken-down bus that’s been abandoned and tagged, Poppa Waz a Playa, and drive up and up into the dirt and the rock, towards the top. We see the hand-made sign, “The Hill,” and go right on by; the stars are out and clear.

“Hell of a night for a fire,” I say.

“You bet.” Chance smiles; he’s an outdoorsman, or outdoorsboy, whichever, and I know it’s a trait he inherited from his dad, a man that I’ve never met, but when I took Em to the lake with my family, she slapped and itched and when I said take in the autumn leaves and she said, “I can’t wait until autumn leaves, or we leave, this place isn’t for me,” that’s how I know.

We pull over the top and the headlights bounce off the back of a red, rusty Jeep next to Rodney’s pop-up camper. His moped leans on an old, empty oil drum. I give the horn a little honk, and Chance pops the door open; it gives a whine from pushing it wide. We get Peanut on the ground, and he has some trouble negotiating the terrain; he’ll get by and I know he won’t make it far from us.

The tin door on the camper swings open. Rodney steps out, then lets the door slap back with a wobble and crash that sounds like a faulty cooking pan.

“Well, well, look who it is,” he says.

I wave. “Sorry, didn’t know you had company.”

He swats at the comment and points to the fire ring. I nod. We head around to the pile of wood near a wheelbarrow that is slick with evening dew and grab a few logs.

“Whose Jeep?” I ask.

“Oh, that’s Charlotte’s,” he says, “she’s my sponsor,” and he gives me an enviable wink, telling me the program isn’t a complete waste.

He looks over and sees Peanut struggling to get around, dragging his wheels, sliding over the dirt mounds and rocks that are his lawn, and says, “Jeez, you gotta be kidding me,” putting a whiskered face down into his knobbled, leathery hand.

“What’ya trying to do? Make me feel all rotten for hurting that pup. You know I didn’t mean nothin.”

I tell him no, no it’s not like that, and explain I’ve got the two of them for the weekend and point over to Chance, who’s crafting a tee-pee out of wood in the pit. When he hears Em is out of town, he looks at me like I’m trying to pull something over on him.

“The Keys, huh?” he says. “Think she’s going to see your old buddy Jorge?”

I say I don’t want to think about it, even though I have been, and ask how about we get this fire going.

We pull some chairs up; Rodney throws a little kerosene around.

“I got a new one,” Rodney says to us and holds up both his hands, palms first then the backs, to prove to us he’s not using a trick, but we know he must be. He flicks on a cigarette lighter, covers it with another one of his damn detachable thumbs, and it appears as if he pulls the flame off the lighter and carries it with his bare hand. It is a nifty, I have to admit.

Rodney lowers his hand to the tee-pee that Chance has stacked, and with a single touch the flames burst and go up with a whoosh that sends Rodney stumbling back, abandoning all showmanship. A sleeve of his flannel catches, and it takes a minute of flailing and smacking before Rodney can extinguish it, leaving an inch or two of melted, charred cuff around his wrist. We clap anyway, Chance and I, and Peanut looks over like we’re calling for him. All of us settle down around the blaze, watching it lick at the wood with crackling heat.

Rodney hollers out for Charlotte, and she appears, silhouetted in the glow of the open camper door. She is a strange beauty, nothing refined, nothing natural, but striking nonetheless. A cloud of buzzing insects jostle around the hanging apparatus near her head, basking in the perilous blue hum; the unfortunate burn out with an electric pop. Her hair is everywhere and the dress she wears is slightly off-center, tight. Barefooted she staggers our way and the burning cigarette that dangles casually from her mouth bobs around when she says, “Well hello, boys.” And I think, that ole Rodney, what a lucky guy. I give him a grin.

After the greetings and the introductions, we begin to empty the cans of Milwaukee’s Best. Chance gets a hot dog ready to roast on a stick he’s found nearby; I watch him and I admire him, his little fingers working away. Rodney lays a piece of shopping cart on the ring over the flames and turns to Chance, “Now you got a grill.”

When nobody talks, the silence is hypnotic. It’s easy to just stare and feel. The stinging cloud of smoke chokes my eyes red, but I don’t close them because I can see these headlights that are coming, burning up from the dark down below the hill. I hear the crunch and pop of rocks under tires, and I hope for a second for a change of heart, a change of her plans. But when the car motors on by, disappearing as a wisp of kicked-up dirt into the uncharted plateau, beyond our camp, I tilt back my can and take a long pull.

Charlotte, Rodney, and I are more than halfway through the case that none of us should be drinking, and Chance has eaten enough hot dogs to call it quits. I carry an armful of empties over to my truck and pull down the tailgate; I line the cans up like a carnie and fill my pockets with the stones that have been rattling around my truck bed.

I’m walking back from my truck, and I see those faces sitting around, flickering in the effulgence, and the dog and his wheels, and the bugs that chirp and chime in and out of the distant darkness. I look up and lose my memory in the moon. If this were where we lived, we’d be home.

“Well, let’s see what you got,” I say, and drop some stones in Chance’s lap.

He makes a neat pile on his knee and scoots to the edge of his chair. He squints an eye shut and takes aim, pulling the slingshot taut, a little tip of tongue creeping out the corner of his mouth. His fingers release the leather pad with an elastic slap and we all hear the metallic ring of a dented, downed target.

One by one, he picks the stones up and fires them over towards my truck, knocking a can with a hollow clunk each time. Charlotte bounces in her chair and claps with every shot, interrupting the napping Peanut who has snuggled by her feet.

“Woo wee,” Rodney says with a satisfied grin. “A young man with a sure shot like that is gonna make it in this world.”

We keep setting them up and he keeps knocking them down, as dead and true of aim as we’ve ever seen. And I think, if Em never comes back he’ll be mine. If she’s removable, if she can just up and detach at will, what will bring her back. Are these the amends Em spoke of, a lifetime of amends. And when I look at Chance’s concentration, his unyielding glare, I wonder if he’s waiting for her, waiting for Monday, her return just as planned, or if he’d be proud to have me as a guardian if she never arrives, and just as the thought rolls around in my mind, I realize I just don’t know what I would say. I don’t know what I want to say.

And for the rest of our evening, we spend it like this, under the sky on top of the hill listening to the rocks and the cans and the echoes that roll and roll away, wondering if Chance will ever miss.

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Dennis Scott Herbert is a recent graduate of Coastal Carolina University, where he completed his fiction thesis under the guidance of Jason Ockert. His work has been published in Archarios Literary Art Magazine.

KRYPTONITE

By Nick Kocz

Hours after Jill gave birth to our first child, Superman knocked on the door to our maternity room. We were friends, Superman and I. The previous day, he foiled one of Lex Luther’s diabolical plots. Now, he swaggered into the room carrying six dozen red roses that he tossed on Jill’s bed as she slept. His archenemy was behind bars again, and you could tell from the way he cocked his head, the squiggle of black hair falling over his forehead, that he was proud—he was a man so proud of his manhood that he could walk freely in broad daylight wearing a bright blue leotard and red cape without fear of ridicule. He was at the top of his game, and the pride that he took in his accomplishments was infectious. If he could foil criminal masterminds, surely I could handle whatever mundane duties came my way.

“Gee! How you doing?” Superman asked.

I was fine. More than fine. Stephen, my new baby, was resting under bilirubin phototherapy lamps in the hospital nursery to treat the peachy tinge of neonatal jaundice, a condition of no lasting consequence. The birth was an especially long one, Jill’s water breaking 48 hours before Stephen crowned. Just standing next to her all that time was exhausting. And exhilarating. What I did was nothing compared to the push push push that Jill went through. She perspired tremendously from the strain and I wiped the sweat from her head, held her hand, and massaged her thighs, which were constantly cramping.

“You held her hand for two days?”

“It was wonderful. And then seeing Stephen come out. It’s just . . . ” I couldn’t describe the elation. Above Jill’s bed hung a framed Thomas Kinkade poster of a gas lamp-lit cobblestone village. Before Superman arrived, I had been imagining how satisfying it would be to take up residence in one of those serene Kinkade cottages, snowflakes falling outside our windows as we gathered inside around the fireplace to roast marshmallows and drink cocoa. I wanted that kind of idyllic existence. Never had I felt closer to my wife. “I can’t describe the feeling. It was wonderful. That sounds so sappy, doesn’t it?”

“That’s swell!” Superman picked up one of the complimentary parenting magazines that the hospital supplied and rifled its pages. We had kept in touch for years, Superman and I. He’d call my office to get together for lunch or dinner, maybe a round of drinks or take in a ballgame, things we’d been doing since our college days. This continued even after I married Jill. He’d call and we’d go out, but sometimes work or Jill would get in the way and I’d have to decline. Still, we kept in touch. Constitutionally immune to complexity, his favorite expressions were “Great!” “Swell!” and “Super!” Once, in an awkward effort to update his vocabulary, he told me that my blue-and-red striped necktie was “Stellar!” and then looked sheepishly from side to side until he asked, “Is that how they say it? Stellar?” I assured him that that was indeed how they said it, but never heard the word again from his lips. “Did I tell you how I foiled Lex Luther? X-Ray vision sure comes in handy.”

Just then, a nurse—Nurse Namoff—entered the room and gave a start when she saw the roses covering Jill’s bed. The way she reacted, it was as if she thought the flowers posed a deadly threat. She wore the kind of folded white cardboard nurses’ hat that I would have thought went out of fashion with Clara Barton. A white smock hid all but the pleated skirt of her brown dress. She scowled at the flowers, and then pivoted around to face Superman, before announcing, “Official hospital visiting hours for the day are over.”

“But this is Superman,” I said.

Nurse Namoff let out a sigh. Of course she knew it was Superman. The way she sneered, touching her forehead, made me feel suddenly the dunderhead for pointing out the obvious. Who else would have a large yellow “S” emblazoned on the chest of his blue superhero costume? She raised her wrist, ostensibly to look at her watch. “Well. Maybe he can stay a few minutes more.”

“That would be great!” Superman said. “I’d love to stay here a few more minutes!”
Nurse Namoff glanced at him. “I’m sure you would.”

Jill shifted in her sleep, rolling against the metal restraining bar on her hospital bed. Earlier, we played with the bed’s controls—raising her head, lowering her feet, and tilting her this way and that as if the bed were a funhouse ride—when the same nurse who now wanted to exclude Superman from our room scolded us. Now Nurse Namoff adjusted the thin green hospital blanket over her patient, but it was no use: a moment later, Jill awoke, throwing off her blanket.

“Congratulations, ma’am!” Superman said, his voice a rich baritone that imparted compassionate authority. Jill brightened instantly. From somewhere in the room came a breeze that unfurled his red cape. Even Nurse Namoff was impressed. I used to think that only Mary Tyler Moore had the power to turn the whole world on with her smile but Superman had it too, that positive energizing vibe. Had there been a speeding bullet in our vicinity, surely he would have stopped it.

“Do you want to see your baby?” Nurse Namoff asked.

“Stephen,” I said, saying his name for the first time. While Jill had slept, I filled out the official paperwork. We had agreed upon the name beforehand, but I still felt guilty for squeezing her out of that momentous process and taking it upon myself to sign the documents.

“That’s a swell name!” Superman said.

Nurse Namoff excused herself to get Stephen from the nursery. Though still waking, Jill was alert enough to attribute the roses scattered on her bed to Superman, knowing that spectacular gestures were his forte. She held one of the buds and sniffed it, a pleasing smile coming over her face.

To my surprise, Superman blushed. “You guys are so lucky! I mean, really. I bet you are going to have lots of babies.”

Jill winced. “Lots?”

“You won’t want Stephen to be an only child, will you?” Superman said.

“You were an only child.”

Superman’s eyes widened. “Hey! I was! Wasn’t I?”

Nurse Namoff returned, wheeling in Stephen, who was asleep in what appeared to be a Plexiglas tote on top of a stainless steel cart. Moments after his birth, nurses had recorded his weight as eight pounds six ounces but already, bundled in blue flannel swaddling blankets, he seemed bigger. Lest there be any confusion about his gender, a blue knit ski hat that proclaimed, “I’m a boy!” engulfed his head. A blue balloon was tied to one of the cart’s steel legs. I’d been wearing the same oxford shirt for three days, ever since Jill called me at the office to say her water broke, and that oxford shirt, while wrinkled, was also blue. We were boys—Stephen, Superman, and I—and I wanted to believe we’d be boys for the rest of our uncomplicated boy lives, hanging out together and doing boy things like repairing engine head gaskets on refurbished Fords and afterwards sitting on a couch and gnawing the meat off chicken wings while watching baseball games and debating why, exactly, there just aren’t many stellar middle relievers anymore.

“He’s great!” Superman said. The force of his exuberance was such that the Thomas Kinkade poster shook in its frame above Jill’s bed. “Say! Can I hold him?”

Bundled as he was in his swaddling blanket, Stephen looked like an otherworldly blue mummy. Jill bit her lip. I could see that she wanted first crack at holding Stephen, but reluctantly she gave her assent, nodding.

As soon as he lifted Stephen from the cart, Superman wobbled backwards. And then Superman looked at me, scared. He tried to laugh, but perspiration broke out over his forehead. He staggered back a few steps and plopped into a chair. His breath was labored, raspy. He wiped his brow with the tail-end of his red cape. “He’s heavy. Really. He’s heavy.”

Stephen slumped awkwardly onto Superman’s lap. Earlier, Nurse Namoff had cautioned us that, “a baby’s neck muscles are not developed enough to support the weight of his head.” When holding him, care had to be taken to support his neck with one hand while cradling the body with the opposite arm. Superman, apparently, knew nothing about proper baby-holding techniques. Stephen’s head flopped to one side.

Seeing this, Jill turned to me and gasped. “Jack, the baby.”

Normally keen to people’s concerns of imminent danger, Superman rested his head in his hands in a manner that oddly reminded me of how my father had looked the day I came home from high school and found him alone at the kitchen table clutching a teaspoon. His hair had started to gray the previous autumn, but until that afternoon it hadn’t registered on me that my father was getting older. I thought he’d forever be a young man. He had just been laid off from the Chevy plant on Delaware Avenue. Mom wasn’t home yet from her own job at the SuperMart, where she sliced bologna and head cheese behind the deli counter. I said hello to Dad three times, but, caught in a trance, he didn’t stir. Finally, I asked if he wanted to throw the football around with me, and he jerked his head up and dropped the teaspoon against an empty saucer and said sure, but when we got outside, he grabbed a baseball from the grass and we threw that instead.

“Superman,” I said.

But Superman didn’t respond.

Stephen sat precariously on Superman’s knee, his head wobbly and unsupported.

I became aware of Nurse Namoff rushing across the room, the pleats of her brown dress billowing out as she swept around me. Perhaps I too was caught in a trance. I wanted to believe that Superman would never let harm befall any person, but then the nurse relieved Superman of the baby and our baby whimpered and I looked at Superman, his arms muscular but inert like steel beams weighing him to the chair.

“He’s all right,” Nurse Namoff said, rocking the baby in her arms. Stephen squiggled, momentarily exposing a foot through the folds of his swaddling blanket. “You’ve got yourself quite a lively fella. You know that?”

A call came over the hospital intercom paging a certain doctor. All of us looked at each other as if it were our names being called. And then Nurse Namoff said, “Perhaps you’d like to allow the new parents some alone time?”

The nurse’s words took a few moments to register on Superman. He expended great effort just to raise his head. Red welts, the telltale sign of a bad case of hives, appeared on his face. He scratched one of them and studied the fluid that oozed from it onto his fingernails. If I didn’t know better, I would’ve guessed he was suffering from a hyper-allergenic reaction—but Superman didn’t have allergy problems, did he? “So visiting hours are over?”

Nurse Namoff straightened the pleats of her dress. “They have been for a while.”
Superman nodded. I half-expected him to open the window and take a flying leap. Indeed, I was looking forward to him shouting, “Up! Up! And away!” but instead he got up and walked. Because he was in costume, he wasn’t wearing shoes, and when he walked, his footed heels slid across the gray tiled floor. “Should I close the door?” he asked.

“Yes,” Nurse Namoff said. “I think you might.”

“I’ll be seeing you,” he said. He waved, unenthusiastically, and then closed the door behind him with as little noise as possible.

Stephen had apparently soiled his diaper and, while Jill remained in bed admiring her roses, Nurse Namoff took it upon herself to give me a diapering tutorial, telling me to place the new diaper beneath Stephen while he was still wearing the old one. With luck, Nurse Namoff said, he’d be potty trained within twelve months. Then she pinched her nose. “Until then, good luck.”

“He looks like you,” Jill said, meaning the baby and me. “Don’t you think?”

I snatched the old diaper out from under him, then folded the new one over his private parts, and only then did I realize that I positioned the diaper backwards.

Stephen didn’t look like me. What she really meant was that he looked like the photographs of my father that she had seen. Because of what happened, I knew better than to ask that we name our child after him. What was amazing was that his union life insurance policy paid the claim after the bus incident. No one was convinced that it was an accident, least of all the wiry bus driver who chewed tobacco and spat out the juices into a Styrofoam coffee cup all during the inquiry. There was no reason for my father to be standing on the street corner at that hour of the morning. He had long ago given up job-hunting; most days, he didn’t wake until well after I left for school. According to the driver, my father timed his stumble into the street perfectly to afford maximum impact and the least chance for survival. That’s how the driver, spitting out more brown juices, described it: “a calculated stumble.” Without that insurance pay-out, I never would have been able to go to college.

Diapering was no easy task. The adhesive tabs at the hip ends of the disposable diapers were supposed to fold over the mid-section of the diaper, securing it onto our baby. Yet somehow I pulled too hard and tore off the tabs, rendering the diaper useless. As I did this, Stephen studied me with what I took to be the superhuman intensity of a future Nobel Prize winner. Hours earlier, when I first held Stephen, I was startled by his magnificent azure eyes, the gaze they cast; there was a power to that gaze that I couldn’t describe, simpatico yet searing. It was like he had the power to look right through me. I didn’t quite know what the Nobel Prize was, but I just knew he had that kind of brute mental force.

*

Superman visited us twice in the first week that we brought Stephen home. Both times, he stood in the nursery doorway, his hands on either doorjamb as he gazed at Stephen with such concentration that I was sure he was using his x-ray vision. You could tell he desperately wanted to get closer, Superman did, but it was like something was holding him back. Stephen’s neonatal jaundice disappeared, but he developed a bad case of colic—which Jill said was because I wasn’t bottle feeding him right. He had a latching problem, so I’d feed him milk that Jill pumped into bottles. Jill tried to be helpful, saying that I should not hold the bottle at too steep an angle, which prevented him from getting proper tongue traction on the latex nipple. Then she said I held the bottle too close to him. Or I was holding the bottle too tightly. And maybe I wasn’t burping him right either, because, as she said, “burping can be tricky-tricky.”

Some nights there’d be a phone call. Jill would answer because I’d be saddled with Stephen, feeding him. In the moments when Stephen wasn’t crying, I’d hear Jill explain that I couldn’t be interrupted right then. Sometimes the caller would persist—which led me to believe that it was Superman who was calling, for he was nothing if not persistent—and her tone became scathing. When she wanted, she could be downright rude. “Listen, pal, don’t you go bothering him. I tell you he’s daddying.”

Maybe that’s what I was doing—daddying—but it seemed like all I did was upset my son. He looked to be in physical pain. Nothing I did made it better. He’d close his eyes and wail, his nose wrinkling, his skin pinkening, both his hands balled into little fists that he shook wildly. It was hard not to take his frustration personally. His eyes would snap open, taking me in as if he were passing judgment against me.

I meant to return Superman’s calls, but Stephen wouldn’t tucker out until 3 a.m., leaving me with precious few hours to sleep before I had to wake up spry for my office job. We lost touch, Superman and I. When he did catch me, he’d suggest happy hour or a ballgame, things we used to do together. I’d sigh into the phone, thinking of the good old days—how, before the baby, Jill wouldn’t mind if I went out once in a while—but now, with obligations at home, I had to decline his invitations.

“So what do you think about this crime wave we’re having?” Jill asked one night. She passed me two bottles of milk she had just pumped. Her milk always amazed me, how warm it was fresh from her breasts. Through the clear bottles, it had the color of daisy petals. It didn’t seem real.

“Crime wave?”

Since Stephen’s birth, I hadn’t paid attention to the news, but now Jill showed me the Daily Planet newspaper articles. Banks all over town were getting robbed. On consecutive days, the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd National Banks went down, the robbers always getting away in a black 1937 Packard. You would think a 75-year-old vehicle would be easy to find in Midtown, but the police were stumped. Criminals were breaking out of jail and solid citizens were turning to a life in crime. Stockbrokers ruthlessly shattered convenience stores’ plate glass windows and ran off with inventories of malt liquor and ridged potato chips. The word was out on the streets: Superman was out of the crime-stopping game. After nabbing Lex Luther, Superman responded to exactly one distress call: a tabby cat had wandered onto the roof of one of the gloriously colored Victorians on Wellsberry Hill and the elderly occupant of that house worried that the cat couldn’t get down without assistance. That much, utilizing an extension ladder, Superman could handle. Nothing in town was working the way it ought. Years of reliance upon Superman had allowed city commissioners to divert resources away from the police force, which now no longer had the manpower or training to combat this wave of wanton stockbrokers.

Curiosity got the better of me. The next time Superman called, I jumped on his invitation to go out. What he wanted to do was go bar-hopping, not to pick up chicks but because of the introspective qualities afforded when languishing on a padded stool in a smoky room as the barkeep tallied up the night’s total in the moments after last call.

“What gives?” I asked when I met up with him.

We were sitting at the oak bar at Delancey’s Lucky Province, the air gray with cigarette smoke in open defiance of the city’s ban on public smoking. Superman stared into his Guinness. A bruise, purple and ringed with a greenish glow, glared luridly on his chin. I had set my cellphone to vibrate, and now it was rattling the small change in my pocket.

“Do you remember, ‘Up Up And Away’?” Superman asked. Because he was widely ridiculed in the media, he no longer pranced about town in his classic blue spandex superhero costume. The Daily Planet ran a front-page editorial featuring his picture under the headline “Dereliction of Duty.” “Wanted” posters were pasted on lampposts. He needed a disguise. That evening he was dressed in a gray flannel suit and a blue-and-gold silk necktie; to my mind, he looked suspiciously like a stockbroker. Women eyed us from the corner booth but, from where he sat, I doubted he could see these cute office workers in smart-cut skirts and bold-colored knit tops. He took off his brown fedora and played with the dent in its crown. Like Superhero costumes, you just don’t see many fedoras nowadays. Whether the girls were appraising us for possible romantic encounters or thinking of phoning in a Superman sighting to the police, I was not sure.

“Those were swell, my Up Up And Away days. So, gee, yesterday I’m sitting on my deck. Police sirens blared in every direction, bursts of gunfire going off. So I figured, wouldn’t it be neat to get back in the game?” He took another sip from his Guinness and set the glass back on its cork coaster. “Up, up and away and all that.”

Suddenly he jumped off the stool and assumed the posture: one arm raised to the sky, knees bent to a semi-crouch, his powerful feet ready to push off. His eyes were glassy, as if he were no longer here in the bar but up in the sky whisking through clouds. Although he said he hadn’t been working out lately, the sight was impressive. He thrust out his chest and shouted, “Up, Up and Away!,” his voice booming.

I thought he was really going to do it: take off flying. All twenty people in the bar, including the deejay setting up his equipment, turned to look. One of the women in the corner booth, the brunette with the dangling star-shaped earrings, raised her cellphone. I couldn’t tell if she was taking his picture or dialing 911. He held that incredible posture for several seconds and gradually I became aware of the silence overtaking the bar, everyone still staring at him, their mouths agape, and my excitement turned into embarrassment for my friend.

“So what happened?” I asked.

“I leapt up maybe five feet. It felt awesome! Is that how they say it nowadays, ‘awesome?’”

“That’s all?”

“Then I fell down. Whacked my head on the side of the deck.” His fingers traipsed over the bruise on his chin so gingerly that I could tell it still hurt. “That’s how I got this. I leapt up again but it was no better. Something was pulling me down.”

My phone vibrated again in my pants pocket. Jill was trying to track me down but, by my reckoning, I still had an hour maybe less to get home before Stephen’s next feeding.

“I keep thinking of your baby, how I’m letting him down.”

“How are you letting him down?”

“I keep thinking of his face. He’s perfect.”

I hadn’t told Superman about the problems we were having: Jill’s pumping and the baby’s failure to latch properly, the nightly ritual of him throwing tantrums and me unable to soothe him. I was still perpetuating the myth of our baby’s perfection, telling grocery store cashiers and the Asian woman who worked at the dry-cleaners how great he was; anything less would have been a betrayal. The previous night his colic had become so violent that he threw up Jill’s breast milk on me. Twice.

Just before we left the hospital, Nurse Namoff pulled me aside. She already sensed that Stephen might be too much for us to handle. Jill was in a wheelchair, orderlies rolling her toward the elevator. The hospital had this policy that discharged patients could not leave on their own power but had to be given a wheelchair ride to the exit. Something about indemnities. I lingered behind, getting a last look at that cobblestone Kinkade village. Brilliant yellow coronas haloed each street lamp on the poster while snowflakes the size of marbles tumbled through the air. Puffs of smoke issued from the cottage chimneys. “Some babies are more challenging than others,” Nurse Namoff said. I hadn’t expected her to be so frank. All the while I had looked upon her as some kind of hospital automaton, someone who recorded temperatures and dispensed stiff but courteous wisdom. She looked at me as if to gauge whether I understood the severity of her implication. “Listen, it’s your job to support your wife through this.” I nodded. What else could I do, my hands weighted down with a suitcase and our new breast pump?

“I could never have something so perfect,” Superman said. Incredibly, he was choking up.

“You okay?”

“You have your daddying. It must be so nifty, isn’t it?”

“Nifty?”

He looked at me as if I were stupid, gulped the rest of his Guinness, then turned around and glowered at the women. How he knew they gawked at him was beyond me. The brunette’s face crumpled. She let go of her phone, dropping it into a pitcher of pale ale. Another girl at the table, a blonde with wavy hair, plunked down a twenty-dollar bill next to the pitcher while the rest gathered their fabric handbags and jackets, the brunette wrapping a wool scarf around her neck even though the weather outside was mild. Soon they were gone and when he turned his attention back to me, a fiendish pleasure lit his face. He pushed the fedora over his head, crumpling the dent that he had so carefully prepared. “They were mocking me.”

“So?”

“Don’t you see?”

I had no idea what he was talking about. The phone vibrated again in my pocket. Pretty soon I was going to have to leave. In less than an hour, Stephen was going to throw up on me again. And again.

“Answer your phone, Jack,” Superman said. Somewhere along the way, he had lost the wonder, the charity, in his voice. It had only been a few months since he put away Lex Luther, but already he viewed himself as a has-been. He made a scribbling motion to the bartender. He wanted to get the tab. “At least you have some purpose in life.”

Many years ago, my father took me to a bar. It was my seventeenth birthday and although I was still underage, he wanted to buy me my first beer. Lucky’s Cellar was neither underground or oozing of fortuitous charm. What sunlight that bleared the windows cast a speckled pall over the establishment; it was a place that surely must have looked better at night. This was the first time in months that I had seen my father so animated. Most days, he just sat on the sofa. Out of work then for two years, he ordered a Genesee Cream Ale draught for himself and had the barkeep fetch me a bottle of Molson’s. In Buffalo, Canadian brews were the only imported beers most bars carried. There was the snap of billiard balls ricocheting off each other in the Lucky’s back room. The barkeep scrutinized me, sizing me up, but he wasn’t about to question a man’s word that his son was old enough to drink and soon my father toasted my birthday, clinking my bottle with his glass. The three other guys in the bar snapped to attention. I realize now that, hearing the toast, they were hoping that my father might spot them a round, but at the time I took their sudden interest in my birthday as a sign of respect: for my father, if not for me. There was pride in my father’s voice. Though he could not afford to buy anyone (myself included) another drink, he told everyone that I was going to go to college and “be something more than a laid-off rear axle man.” It seemed like a pipe dream. College cost money. The previous month, we sold the television for grocery money. He declared that I was going to have a purpose in life, but when he said this, what he meant was that this purpose—sending me off to college—had become his purpose. The next morning, he stepped in front of the charging bus.

Superman lowered his head. Outside, another police siren blared, followed by the cry of an ambulance. “Go ahead. Answer it. Tell your wife how lucky you are.”

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Nick Kocz’s stories have appeared in Black Warrior Review, The Florida Review, Mid-American Review, Waccamaw, and Web Conjunctions.

BEACH BLITZ VI

By Michael Fischer

The day before the last Beach Blitz fishing trip, we practice-casted our donated surf rods on the children’s ward lawn. Beach Blitz was a tradition that would end when Mid-State Psychiatric closed in the winter and we were shipped to group and foster homes, or other hospitals not yet condemned by the feds. Jeffers, our favorite healthcare tech, sat on the cracked stoop yelling pointers when not laughing or supping his Styrofoam black coffee.

“See that blade of grass yonder with a cricket on its stalk?” Royce said. “I’m gonna hit it.”

Royce whipped his rod. The line whizzed and the Egyptian pyramid sinker smacked the cricket’s dome.

“Good’un,” Jeffers said.

“Dude’s dead,” Royce said. “Your turn.”

I pretended my rod was a catapult. I’d seen the filmstrip in Hospital School about trench warfare and catapults launching grenades across enemy lines. We watched the filmstrip after reading the best book ever, All Quiet on The Western Front. Hospital School would’ve been better if we’d always read war books and watched the filmstrips afterward, or if classes weren’t held in the basement cafeteria where teachers talked over clattering pots and pans.

“Dang,” Royce said. “You slow.”

“I’m loading up,” I said, and checked my Trilene knot and Egyptian pyramid sinker. Jeffers taught us fishing knots out of a falling-apart book his father gave him. The book sat on the day room shelf with half its pages missing and the cover stained with state grape juice.

“Fire in the hole!” Royce said.

I flung hard, but the Egyptian pyramid sinker snapped off the line sideways into Jeffers’ head. He dropped his coffee, groaned, and held his forehead. A brown stream leaked from the stoop and his Styrofoam cup rolled in the grass.

“You blinded Jeffers!” Royce said.

I really thought I’d blinded him. I’d heard of fishing accidents where lures popped back into the caster’s eyes and doctors filled the socket with glass.

“It’s okay,” Jeffers said, and laughed, and then Royce and me were laughing too. Jeffers rubbed his forehead and asked us to follow him upstairs to the nurse’s station.

“Mrs. French will patch you up,” Royce said.

“Need more than that,” Jeffers said.

The welt was a humongous red bulb.

“Mrs. French will do you right,” Royce said.

I could tell Royce enjoyed looking after Jeffers, since Jeffers usually looked after us.

“Let’s go,” Royce said, opening the door for Jeffers and me, then screaming up the stairwell for Mrs. French.

Jeffers smiled.

 

We never made Beach Blitz VI, so Beach Blitz V, which was before my commitment, was the last Beach Blitz. The hospital canceled the trip due to lack of funds.

“It’s my fault,” I told Jeffers and Royce the next morning in the day room.

We sat with the rest of the boys, all of us dressed to go on a canceled fishing trip at five a.m. Jeffers’ forehead was patched.

“Huh?” Jeffers said.

“I liked to have blinded you. They probably said, imagine what could happen at the beach!”

“It ain’t your fault,” Royce said.

“He’s right,” Jeffers said. “Funding issues.”

The other boys agreed. “It ain’t your fault,” they sang, like a chorus, and Royce turned to a Saturday morning fishing show.

“This one’s my favorite,” he said. “Dude knows all the spots and holes.”

I pulled the falling-apart book from the shelf and read the back cover. The author was a Scoutmaster. He’d dedicated the book to his scouts and ended with a verse from Matthew—Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.

“What are you doing?” Jeffers asked.

I tried to read the verse aloud, but my voice cracked at “follow me—” and the rest of the pages fell to the roach-powered floor.

“It ain’t your fault,” the chorus sang.

I picked up the pages and imagined a beach or pond where my casts never missed their mark.

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Michael Fischer’s work has appeared in several national print and online journals, and his most recent work is forthcoming in Phoebe and Natural Bridge.